IAM1775 – Entrepreneur Helps People to Solve Financial Problems

Previous Episode: https://iamceo.co/2019/07/03/iam-324-entrepreneur-helps-people-to-solve-financial-problems/

Transcription:

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Chris Jackson Teaser 00:00

And what I'm really trying to do is help them engage in terms of answering three basic questions. Where they are right now, what do they have? What are their income what they do, where do they want in the future? And what are the tools and what are they willing to do to make those changes, to make that future come to fruition?

Intro 00:16

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs, without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of.

This is the I AM CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:43

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. And if you've been listening this year, you know that we hit 1600 episodes at the beginning of this year. We're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes around certain categories, topics, or as I like to call them, business pillars that we think are going to be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners. Or what I like to call the CB Nation architects, those that are looking to level up their organizations.

This month we are focusing on knowing thy numbers. I could hear the phrases from Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank, and if you understand or don't understand exactly what numbers is, think finance, economics, accounting, capital, investment, funding, bootstrapping, anything that's around numbers. So, we have to understand how important it is to know your numbers and how important that is for you to forecast, make decisions, and to be able to truly strategize around your business and do that successfully.

Things are gonna be a little bit different obviously, this month. So look for CEO hacks and CEO nuggets and interviews that focus around this. But more than everything else, make sure that you know your numbers because they're extremely important to the life of your business.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Chris Jackson of Lionshare Partners. Chris it's awesome to have you on the show.

Chris Jackson 02:08

Gresh, thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless 02:09

No problem. Super excited to have you on. What I wanted to do is just read a little bit more about Chris so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing.

Chris is the founder of Lionshare Partners, a trusted financial planning firm. He draws on a decade of multidisciplinary experience to help high-net-worth individuals and small business owners solve their financial challenges. Prior to founding Lionshare, Chris helped manage over 300 million of individual and institutional assets and held senior roles at multiple globally recognized investment firms

As an entrepreneur, speaker, and media personality, Chris has been featured in several news outlets such as CNN, Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. He currently serves as a board member of the nonprofit Strive LA, a mini campus for Los Angeles inner-city youth. He also serves as a market analyst for the iHeartRadio Podcast City, Watch on the Air.

Chris, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Chris Jackson 03:04

I'm fired up. Ready to go!

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Gresham Harkless 03:06

Let's do it. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you start your business.

Chris Jackson 03:12

Yeah, I've been in the personal finance field for about 10 years serving both sides on the sales and client acquisition side, all the way to the client service and delivering of the financial planning modules. Over the last couple of years, prior to me launching my firm in 2017, I didn't like the direction that I saw what was going in the industry with a lot of private equity firms buying up investment management firms and moving the prices up making it very tough for financial advisors to have a really healthy, engaged conversation because they're book got too big to handle.

Instead of a two-hour face-to-face meeting for client, you're moving it down to a a 30-minute virtual conversation. You really can't go in-depth and provide what you want to provide. So that kind of led me to look for alternatives in terms of what can I do with my own time, with my own abilities and skillsets? Thankfully there were organizations out there that were helpful in providing and launching my wealth management firm Lionshare to the point where now I can serve my own book of business. I can be more flexible in who I bring in.

One thing that's very tough in wealth management firm is you can find a fantastic family that can use your help, but due to some impossible hurdle or some hard hurdle, like they must have a million dollars invested with you. You end up turning down some pretty good clients. You end up accepting some clients that are just chasing a return. They're not really trying to engage with you on a personal level. They're trying to almost hope that they can roll the dice with you like a casino and get a big payout based on market returns.

Gresham Harkless 04:40

That makes perfect sense. I definitely appreciate you for starting your own organization, your company, because a lot of times you get to help out, which I think we sometimes forget, but you being able to do that from a Lionshare standpoint, but also from a board member as well, you really get the opportunity to make an impact.

Chris Jackson 04:55

Absolutely. The one thing that's important for me is, there wasn't a lot of African Americans in our field. Bottom line, that's always been an issue in the finance industry. And though there's been many pro programs and outreach programs and Bank America and Wells Fargo, all launch minority women-based programs to get more representation. There's still a huge gap there.

What makes it difficult on the African American side is that we don't have our own unified language like Latin Americans and Asian Americans where they can consolidate into I speak this language before I have a strong on this community. For us it's always been for African Americans, it's always been a lack of access to prudent financial literacy and education. That has led to some of the huge inequality gaps.

So one thing I like to do with Strive, and one thing I'm working on right now with a director and writer Christina Cooper, is a financial literacy program. Where we go into some of these, Underserved communities and talk to the school district and talk to somebody, the high-performing seniors that are graduating and say, Hey, this is what you're not learning in school, is what you're not gonna learn in college. But this is gonna prove to be the building blocks for youth success. If you want an entrepreneur. Or if you want to not go the college route.

Gresham Harkless 06:02

Absolutely. Tell us a little bit more on how you're serving your clients and what you feel like is your secret sauce that sets you apart.

Chris Jackson 06:07

Yeah, absolutely. What makes me separate is I have what I call retail and I have a full-service solution. The retail, what I'm looking to launch is, it's called Cash Fit University. There's a lot of do-it-yourselfers out there who just want a little bit of nudge and a little bit of guidance, but they don't want a full-on relationship with me. But they want a place where they can find sourced material, updated material on all kinds of different financial planning topics, from college planning to tax plan, state planning to insurance analysis.

What I want this university to be is a place where people can pick up, where the public schools should really be starting and provide that full comprehensive financial planning education for yourself.  Once you get a sense of that basic education, then you start asking questions in terms of, Hey, do I really need to engage in a financial planner? Do I even enjoy doing this? Do I have the time, and the technology that plan to do it myself? From there you can say, you know what? The retail gave me some insight. I really want the full service. That's when you really engage with me on a one-on-one basis. For most clients I deal with, there'll be the small business owners retirees.

I work for a lot of attorneys and young professionals. What I'm really trying to do is have them engage in terms of three basic questions. Where they are right now, what do they have? What are their rent incomes? What they do, where do they want to be In the future? What are the tools and what are they willing to do to make those changes, to make that future come to fruition? If we can't get a line on those three, and the first one really is not much alignment, it's just your balance sheet. But the other two components, we kind of really align on that.

Then my job is to help you find someone that could be a good source for you on the financial planning side because not everyone's a good fit for me and that's for most businesses. But the retail solution along with the full service, that's kind what makes me different, at least usually find a way to help you.

Gresham Harkless 07:48

Nice. I definitely appreciate that. And it seems in this way that businesses and I guess people really have dictated this, is that, a lot of times there are certain solutions that people want or they're looking for, they know maybe not necessarily exactly what they're looking for, but they might have, like you mentioned, the time to be able to do it. But they may not have the actual resources or knowledge to be able to do that.

So being able to fit into whatever mode somebody might have is definitely a great example of a secret sauce and appreciate you for sharing that with us.

Chris Jackson 08:16

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 08:17

No problem. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Chris Jackson 08:28

Yeah. I have a couple, but the one I like a lot is called Feedly. That is a way for me to consolidate all the different media sources that I'm interested in, whether real estate or economics investment markets, trade policies, and I can take what's important and current then go ahead and repurpose that through my social media channels. So I don't have to spend too much time phishing through what I wanna talk about. I already have these filters preset and they do a good job of just updating me what I can push out because I send out about five articles a day on my LinkedIn page, on Facebook and to have it already preset in terms of how I curate that is important.

Then I use another app called Buffer where I can set out for the whole entire week those 25, 30 articles. So they're already scheduled to go and that kind of does all of my outsourcing, because again, my job is positioning myself as an expert and to be ahead of what's current, but also make sure I have enough content pushed out. Because you never know when someone's gonna chime in on LinkedIn or Facebook or actually catch you on an article. So you got to be consistent. But you also got to have some compelling and interesting things to talk to.

Gresham Harkless 09:46

Absolutely. I love both of those hacks just because a lot of times  always say the name of the game is visibility. So, being in knowing everything, but not knowing of you or of your organization doesn't really help out. So you have to balance both.

Like you mentioned, the consistency aspect of making sure you're pushing out and having that valuable content that's being sent out to the internet so to speak allows you to get that opportunity to be front of mind and be positioned as that expert person to call and go to.

Chris Jackson 10:16

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 10:17

Nice. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This is a word of wisdom or piece of advice or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Chris Jackson 10:28

That's a good question. I would've told my younger self to remove toxic relationships earlier on. Whether that is friends that were grown apart from, that were being leeches of your time, relationships that weren't really allowing me to perform the way I needed to perform. I would replace those with key members that are actually gonna push you to help you grow. One of the best things I did was I joined a lawyer basketball league. I'm not an attorney, but I joined a lawyer basketball league just on a whim because my friend wanted me to do it.

In doing so, I made contact with about 20 to 30 different attorneys. So when I eventually left my firm to launch my own firm, I got sued. They were asking for a substantial amount of money. Due to the fact that I had this relationship, this network, I was able to utilize them. Then I had the firepower needed to wiggle myself out of that lawsuit with ease. If it wasn't for me to break away from my own small network and push into a larger network, I wouldn't have the capacity to actually be able to get to where I'm at now. Without paying that substantial amount of money.

So getting rid of the toxic people in your circle and replacing them with people that can actually help you at capacity to grow as a person and learn new things and keep you driven and pushed is something that I wish I could tell myself when I was 18.

Gresham Harkless 11:46

Nice. I definitely appreciate you for sharing that with us because a lot of times, and I heard a lot of different, nuggets within that really big nugget is that, a lot of times, we as people, and sometimes I start to understand this a lot more as I get older, is that you start to grow apart from maybe who might have been your friend 10 years ago or might have been somebody you spent all your time with whatever that is.

As you evolve and grow and as you start to have different goals, you have to evolve with that, being able to open yourself up and get out of your comfort zone to go to different, like you said, groups or it might be a basketball league or whatever it is. It allows you other opportunities that may pay off in ways you never would've thought of in the short term.

Chris Jackson 12:24

Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 12:25

Nice. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote CEOs on the show.

So, Chris, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Chris Jackson 12:35

For me It's personal IP. It's the ability to, at any point in time, create intellectual property for yourself and your business. The one thing I didn't like about the wealth management firm, and even in a lot of corporate America, it's how to suppress your individuality. That the image has to be the company. That the image has to be what they project, and that you yourself and your individual strengths and what you provide to community, what you provide your clients has to be suppressed, for what is the image of the company, even if you have a better solution or a better way to deliver a service.

Generally that gets squashed or it gets lost in red tape or loss of oxy and you never get a chance to actually implement those things. But having your own company means you have your own personal IP. I can present what I want my story to be at all times to myself, to my clients to the community. That's the most important thing that I think you could possibly do when start your own company, is having that versus going the corporate role.

Gresham Harkless 13:32

Absolutely. I appreciate that definition and personal IP and being able to control the narrative rather than you could in other avenues is definitely huge and a big part of being a CEO. So I appreciate you for sharing that with us and that definition was spot on.

Chris, I truly appreciate your time. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and then of course, how best they can get ahold of you.

Chris Jackson 13:55

Absolutely. I would say one thing is that the word personal finance and financial advisor, it's become a term of art. There's a term called fiduciary, which is very important that I wanna make sure that anyone I work with or when they're working with a financial planner or financial advisor is that they work with someone that's is a fiduciary. What I mean by that is someone that's not going to be selling you products like we sell new commission, that their conflict of interest, their gain in the transaction is you buying something.

The gain in the transaction needs to be that they are able to transform your life through advice, and there is a fee for service planners, flat fee retainer, and financial planners. Those are the ones you should be working with because at least they know at the beginning of the day that you're paying them for their advice and no matter what you do outside, they're not gonna get an additional pay for that. So, their advice is tied to what's best for you and not what's best for the wallets.

Gresham Harkless 14:46

Absolutely. That makes sense. And you want somebody who is a fiduciary, correct?

Chris Jackson 14:53

Yes.

Gresham Harkless 14:54

Nice, nice, nice. And people that want to actually reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Chris Jackson 14:58

They can go to chrisojackson.com. Or they can reach out to me at cjackson@lionsharepartners.org.

Gresham Harkless 15:12

Awesome. Awesome, awesome. We'll have those links and that information as well in the show notes. So Chris, I truly appreciate your time, appreciate all the awesome things that you're doing. I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Chris Jackson 15:21

Gresham, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Outro 15:24

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast, powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

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This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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